Multiple burials— generally defined as the presence of more than one individual within a grave— are a common feature of the Viking Age mortuary landscape throughout Scandinavia and the lands of the Western Diaspora. Even though a number of spectacular examples have captured the imagination of professionals and the public alike, multiple burials have not been the subject of dedicated and systematic archaeological investigation. Despite this, they are widely considered in relation to two interpretive themes emphasising either the 'Ordinary' family nature of the burials, or their role in demarcating social deviants and ‘Others’. In light of the growing recognition that concepts of identity are not static, one–dimensional or universal, I argue that a framework of personhood may better illuminate the nature of the multiple burial rite and its role in producing Viking Age persons. To do so, Viking Age burials located across the lands of the Western Diaspora and the urban trading centres of Kaupang and Hedeby were drawn together to produce an original corpus of multiple burials.

The multiple burial corpus was approached using a perspective grounded in relationality and the ontological turn, which focused on the relationships between various components of the burials, and how persons were produced through these interactions. The analysis centred on three types of beings— humans, animals and things— to explore the ways in which they related and mutually constituted the personhood of the other. The results demonstrate that, firstly, temporality was a key component in the physical construction of Viking Age multiple burials and the ontological construction of Viking Age persons, and secondly, that the shared bodily experiences of humans, animals and things suggest that persons were potentially conceptualised as ‘not of one shape’ in Viking Age minds. While this study firmly situates the multiple burial rite within the wider suite of normative burial practices observed across the Viking World, it also builds upon a developing discourse in the Scandinavian tradition, which is increasingly revealing the fluidity of 'being' across human, animal and thing bodies in Iron Age myths and material culture. The research poses the question: is it time for us to reconceptualise the multiple burial rite to acknowledge the potential personhood of 'other bodies'?